


May the Odds

by spoken



Series: DBSK Hunger Games Crossover [1]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, TVXQ!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoken/pseuds/spoken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five tributes out of twenty-four. Just another year of the Reaping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**001**

When they call Yunho’s name, no one Volunteers for him.

He goes up onto the podium to the sound of cheers and appraising nods from the Trainers. The sound of belligerent swearing from the hulking 18-year-old monsters at the back of the crowd is barely audible – a rare occurrence for District One, where the lost chance of stardom is mourned by those who are removed from the Reaping by age, not by choice.

No one Volunteers for Yunho because he is destined to live the life of stardom – of victory – and has been since Aptitude Test day when, amongst all the enthusiastic but wildly off centre attempts by other excitable six-year-old boys, he had sunk the practice knife into the centre of the target with deadly, determined accuracy.

The eyes of all the girls follow Yunho up to the podium as he comes to a stop next to the Capitol representative, dressed in bright magenta and turquoise and wearing a vapid grin on his face. Some of them clap their hands to their mouths, eyes shining, when he makes eye contact. Others are craning to catch a glimpse of him as he walks past. Only a few eyes turn to Sandara – the female tribute on the other side of the representative. When he’s on the stage and looking out at the crowd, Yunho sees a girl in the crowd bite her lip, her forehead crumpling with the last of lost hope. Sandara would not be coming home – not with Yunho in the game. Everyone knows that.

Yunho tries not to look at Sandara. Looking at her would make it harder for him to kill her. Tries not to think of his little sister – the only one who, watching somewhere from the crowd, will understand his hands are balled into fists not as a display of determination, but to hide the trembling in his fingers from everyone.

**002**

Junho almost Volunteers.

It takes all of Junsu’s strength to clasp one hand over his brother’s mouth, to keep a hold on his brother’s wrist with the other, and to gift his twin with, _if you Volunteer, I will never talk to you for the rest of my life_ before Kangin, clad in his new white Peacekeeper uniform, reaches them and escort Junsu to the stage.

He doesn’t see his parents’ faces, but he knows that, under their worry and sadness, there will be relief, because Junsu has spent his life preparing to either Volunteer for his brother, or prevent Junho from Volunteering, and he’s just succeeded.

Just before he steps on stage with slightly shaky legs, Kangin clasps a hand to Junsu’s shoulder and gives it a light squeeze. It’s the most support Junsu will get.

Junsu will be lucky if even half his school watches the broadcast and, even then, most of them will be snorting derisively at every mistake he makes. No one in District Two thinks highly of the Games. Children from District Two win, not because they are pampered and trained for empty glory like District One, but because they faced real danger every day, training and living as Peacekeepers, or dealing with the terrifying maws of metal machines that cough out bullets, bombs and serrated knives in screeches. His brother is the golden boy – one who must not be tainted with the empty, easy life of a Victor – and Junho only has one more year to weather before he is eighteen…and safe.

They expect Junsu to win because they expect that from every District Two Tribute.

It doesn’t actually matter. Junsu’s lost – one way or another – as soon as he’s called.

**005**

It sucks because, if the Reaping had been a week earlier, Yoochun would have been in the Fifties. If it had been a week earlier, the boy at the bottom of the list would have had to step up – a moment his family would have resigned themselves to when they saw his name fall. Not many districts got to interfere with the justice of the Reaping, but District Five raise children of the future – children who would go on to invent new muttations, splices, easier ways to fix people and even easier ways to break people. Those in the top Fifty would be spared from the Reaping, for a greater purpose: to become the people who would eventually make the monsters who will, one day, rip children to pieces.

Yoochun wasn’t sure he wanted to be one of those people, which is why he allowed his grades to slip and willed himself not to be affected by the warning in the Professors’ voices when they told him about his latest exam mark. Why he told himself, while trying to block out the sight of his mother’s worried frowns, that he wouldn’t mind being Reaped and to try his hand at a different kind of combat - if he could invent one less mutated gene, maybe, maybe…

But he’s standing up here now and, for all Park Yoochun knows about splicing genes and can recite the chemicals he needs to make a jabberjay, he realises doesn’t know anything about the crude, cold metal of knife edges and arrowheads.

A great sigh goes up when Choi Sulli’s name is called. The doe-eyed girl with porcelain skin and a sweet smile, who’s made more research breakthroughs at sixteen than scientists twice her age. Ranked third.

The girl at the very bottom of the list Volunteers, as expected. The crowd is still murmuring and whispering about Yoochun. District Five doesn’t like surprises – they like cold, solid hypotheses. To have a boy standing on the stage who had once cracked the Top Ten is not in alignment with their predictions.

Yoochun tries not to look at the spot in the crowd where he knows Yoohwan is crying. As the Peacekeeper had wrenched Yoohwan’s grip free from Yoochun’s arm, Yoochun had tried to smile. “Study hard,” he said.

Suddenly he wants to live more than anything.

**010**

It’s the first time Jaejoong has listened to the names of the female Tributes being called out without the sickly terror that upheaved his stomach and made bile rise in the back of his throat – like a vindictive friend who visited every year since he had been old enough to understand what happened to the people who were chosen to stand on the high stage, above the vast crowd of people in District Ten. The first time because finally – finally – Sooyoung is standing with the rest of his sisters in the adult crowd, nineteen years old and dressed in her absolute best standing next to Hyosung, a thin band of silver around her ring finger.

The last person Jaejoong had to worry about and she’s safe – along with Hankyung and Yesung, and all of Sooyoung's friends who are standing on the other side of the barrier. District Ten is a large one, with many, many people. No one can complain about the Reaping being biased or controlled like Five, if the rumours are to be believed, but Jaejoong’s family is large – too large and perhaps unfairly so. Jaejoong will never forget the year he was ten; he and his sisters were walking home when the wife of one of the tanners had stepped up to them and spat at the ground in front of Ahyoung – who was the same age as their only daughter, who had just been Reaped. The girl died at Cornucopia. Ahyoung had cried that night, sobbing into Seonhee’s shoulders – ‘I didn’t want her to go, I didn’t want her to go either!’ and it was from then on that Jaejoong vowed to never tell his family about the sneering whispers and insults people hurled in his direction – black sheep of the family; the strange dark-haired child with staring eyes.

But Sooyoung is safe, Jaejoong reminds himself. They’re okay…they’re okay. Maybe tomorrow he’ll convince his parents to let Sooyoung take the flock with him to the high mountain plains, and they could make daisy chains like when they were children, and maybe he'll ask her how to weave wool into fabric so he can try and make the beautiful gold and turquoise gown the Representative is wearing for Sooyoung's wedding and-

“…the male tribute for this year is Kim Jaejoong.”

 

**012**

Changmin doesn’t allow himself to cry, even as the Peacekeepers pull his sobbing sisters away from him, and hang on to them to stop them from running after the train. He doesn’t let himself look back at the familiar landscape of District Twelve, or to think about his parent’s soft, sad eyes. They are gentle folk, who never thought he would be picked over the hollow-eyed, desperate kids from the Seam with several families’ worth of tesserae in the draw. It’s simple bad luck, no other way to put it. The female Tribute, Jia, is from the Seam – she has calculating eyes, sunken in from hunger, but she eats the Capitol food spread out on the train readily enough. She’s going to be dangerous, but not impossible to beat. Changmin watches her. When he gets to the Capitol, he’ll watch the other Tributes.

Changmin has no idea how to hunt, how to scavenge, how to kill, but Changmin knows how to learn. He’s gotten this far now, and, gods be damned, he’s going to go home.


	2. Ever in Your Favour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six moments in the 72nd Hunger Games

**001**

They dress Yoochun and his District partner in a slightly more tailored version of the lab coats he had grown up wearing – iridescent blue lattices of chemical structures covering the sleeves. It’s simple, expected and draws next to no attention at the opening ceremony.

Yoochun can’t blame them. The male Tribute from District One looks like he’s already been crowned, in his cape of liquid gold and tunic gleaming with embedded mirror pieces; tall, statuesque and proud, the planes of his face and features sculpted to fine perfection. Yoochun can see the hungry, adoring gleam in the spectators’ eyes even from his carriage.

He hears the host remark that the boys from Two and Three must have swapped this year, because the boy from Three is muscled and intimidating, and the boy from Two is slim and baby-faced, especially next to his impressive female partner. There is a roar of laughing approval from the crowd. The boy from Two manages to smile, eyes pained and unamused.

The girl from District Eight gets an appreciative cheer as the multi-coloured fabrics around her slender arms unfurl in a wave of patterns as the carriage draws to a stop. The camera lingers a little longer than usual on the pale, dark-haired and fine-featured boy from District Ten, so different from the usual stocky boys with gruff, sun-tanned faces.

Yoochun's gaze is, however, drawn to the thin, tall boy from District Twelve as their carriage pulls up, black hair cropped close and dressed in a dull, sooty black that escapes everyone's attention amongst the glamour. The camera's brief, careless pan over his and his district partner's faces, in a hurry to return to the Career Districts, feels like the first mistake.

 

002

The throwing axe plants itself into the bulls-eye, splintering the arrow lodged in the white on its way.

Parts of the room still – the pair from Two, the short, stocky girl from Seven and her hulking District partner, who’s all solid mass and sinew, but without the athletic leanness in the muscles, the pair from Four, the girl from Eight and the boy from Twelve, who narrows his eyes from the fire-starting section.

Jaejoong puts his own bow down as the boy from Three gives him half a smirk and turns back to his partner, throwing another axe effortlessly over his shoulder.

Jaejoong’s District partner is trembling as she eyes the wooden splinters of the target littering the ground – the target she had been earnestly aiming at. She’s small and thin, skin suntanned from herding. She reminds him of a fuzzy memory of Ahyoung. They had been instructed to look mediocre by their blank-eyed mentor, who was as often absent from drugs as he was alert, but this mediocrity was genuine. Children from their district were not taught to use a bow and arrow.

Jaejoong grits his teeth, forcing down the anger as he eyes the healthy undertone of the District Three boy’s face and skin, born of good food and upbringing, which no amount of makeup on the poorer districts could replicate. He had plenty of advantages already.

“Come on,” he says quietly to his partner, putting a careful hand on her shoulder and steering her away from the archery station, towards the next station, where the District One Tributes are leaving the knot-tying class.

They cut an intimidating figure – precise, understated but proud, and not at all what Jaejoong had expected, given their flashy entrance at the Opening. You couldn’t help but be drawn to the District One boy – Jung Yunho, as the television programs were quick to drum into their viewers’ heads. No one except the boy from Two had attempted to strike up any sort of conversation with him. People steered around him with an unusual wary respect.

Jaejoong doesn’t realise he’s staring until the District One boy’s eyes flicker in his direction as they pass each other. Something shifts on Jung Yunho’s face as their eyes meet – there’s a flash of something like recognition, or perhaps disbelief – unexpected - and it sears through Jaejoong, leaving something inside him raw and jagged; a painful flash of fuzzy recollection.

Jaejoong draws in a breath, wanting to speak, but Yunho’s partner says something, everything is abruptly shuttered out and Yunho looks away.

 

**003**

The arena is an arctic wasteland edged by thin scatterings of ghostly white trees; red sun hanging low in the horizon, the distant mountains foggy. Ice crystals gleaming off bare rock faces and the curve of the Cornucopia horn, lit golden by the sunlight.

Changmin keeps close by edges of the mountain and in the shadows, crossbow by his side, eyes trained onto the District Ten boy ahead. The boy is surefooted in the hilly terrain and looks more capable than Changmin of finding some shelter. Changmin can just see the knife in the boy’s hands, angled to avoid the sunlight reflecting off the metal. The steel is quick and good. It would make a good secondary weapon.

He tries to keep breathing evenly as the snowfall thickens and the cold settles deep into his bones. The District Ten boy becomes a dark smear up ahead.

The Careers alliance exploded into a flurry of flashing blades and colliding bodies as soon as the Tributes’ hands closed around their respective items – all of the Tributes aiming for the District One pair. Changmin had watched from the sparse stretch of woodland surrounding the Cornucopia, feeling an odd sense of sympathy for the District One tributes, cursed by their stylists, whose extravagant hubris had surely killed them, in making them targets.

He might have gotten a clear shot at the District One boy – Jung Yunho, the biggest threat - if the District Three boy – Choi Siwon – hadn’t tried to charge Yunho from his left side. Still, watching the battle had not been entirely wasteful.

Changmin learns two things. One - that Jung Yunho is ambidextrous and, two - the boy from District Two wasn’t among the fallen bodies.

 

**004**

Every now and again, the District Five boy stops, running a hand over the rock face or bending down to look at something in the snow – animal or muttation tracks, and resumes picking his path through the winding mountains. Junsu acknowledges grudgingly the boy is smart enough, at least, to keep his back to the mountain whenever he bends down. The girl from District Ten hadn’t been as lucky.

His right side is surely bruised – after an elbow by the District Four boy in the mad scramble to escape and for the backpack now slung over Junsu’s shoulder – but he can’t stop to check.

Junsu tests the grip of the spear in his left hand, before transferring it to his right. The snow is falling thick and fast now. Soon, he’ll be within striking distance.

 

**005**

Yunho swallows. Tries to wipe the rest of the blood off the point of his sword, staining the snow. It’ll give away his tracks, but the worsening snowfall would cover them up soon enough. He concentrates on the District Two boy – Junsu – and on pushing through the exhaustion in his eyes and the chill seeping through his skin. Only a few more to go.

The white parachutes are dropping with the snowfall around him. The bodies around him are still.

 

**006**

The blizzard hits.


End file.
